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Source: Don L – North Coast Woodstock 2015 – Lead – Date Unknown.mp3 File: don-l-north-coast-woodstock-2015-lead-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:02:24
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Hi everybody, I'm Don L., I'm an alcoholic. Happy Saturday to you, absolutely delighted to be here. Thank you for bringing half of the state of Oregon up here to participate in the meeting. My turn already. I'll get some stuff out of the way right off the bat. My sobriety date is 9-16-91, so I'm 23 years, I don't know, 6-7 months sober at this point. My home group is the SOS Men's Group. We meet on Wednesday nights at 14th Street, St. James Church, the Fairhaven District of Bellingham.
And if you're ever in town in Bellingham, we'll make you feel very welcome. It's a great meeting. I love my home group. A lot of young guys getting sober there, a lot of old guys staying sober there, guys moving in the same direction. We're getting some stuff done at that meeting. And we discuss the things that you need to discuss at a home group. The service structure, we're well represented. The 7th Tradition, we're always probably the leading contributor in our district at the 7th Tradition.
And that doesn't just happen. These things don't just occur at a group. It's because it comes out of the business meeting, comes out of the group conscience, comes out of yearly inventory. And all these things that we do at the business meeting, discussing the 7th Tradition, being involved in the service structure as heavily as we are, the yearly inventories, everything that we do right underneath that is one theme only.
And that's how can we best carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Do we have a plan in action when the new man arrives at our door? Because we don't know if that's his first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we certainly don't know if that is perhaps his last meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. The window of opportunity for recovery seems to open and close almost instantaneously. And when people get into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's so important to us that they find the kind of AA that we found when we showed up at Alcoholics Anonymous.
The people were on fire. They were on point. And they were ready to welcome me to Alcoholics Anonymous when I came here. Just for my own curiosity, because I always want to know, do we have anybody in here who's in their first year of recovery? Can I see your hand if you're in your first year? Thank you. You're very welcome here. And I know I speak on behalf of everybody in this room. If you're in your first year recovery, I want you to know we are absolutely delighted that you are here.
We also know that if you're in your first year recovery, perhaps you are not delighted that you are here. And believe me, I know what it's like to be new in Alcoholics Anonymous and not be delighted. And, you know, we we mean so well. And this is the reason we mean so well and try so hard with our new friends that come here, because we found a way out. And the only thing more exciting to us than the fact that we found a way out and a brand new way of life is that maybe we can carry that message to somebody else.
Maybe we can help somebody else find a way out from the grinder. Maybe they can have the kind of peace and harmony and love that we found in our life because we believe it's affordable to everybody. We believe this isn't about being smarter, faster, stronger than the next guy. We think that everybody can make it in Alcoholics Anonymous. And because we feel so strongly about that, sometimes we just, you know, we do things with newcomers that are unconscionable.
We're nice to them. And no good newcomer likes to be treated nicely. It's repellent to us because we've just come from an atmosphere where there was nothing nice going on. And it makes us suspicious, doesn't it? Oh, we're so glad you're here. Welcome! And you just want to punch people, don't you? It just makes you a little bit off-ease, you know? Oh, God, and we try, you know, they ask you what's going on with your life.
Oh, not much, you know, just living in my wardrobe, just trying to figure out how I'm going to eat tonight. How are you? And they tell you things like, we know right where you've been. Oh, really? You do? You've had 137 voices in your head at the same time also. You don't look like that. That was a nice car you drove in with tonight. Because we're show-offs in Alcoholics Anonymous. When I got here anyway, there were show-offs in AA.
They had things in their possession I couldn't even dream of ever having. Like valid driver's licenses, you know? And there was an address in the driver's license. And if you went there, they lived there. That's showing off. But if you're new, we know a great deal about you. And I know that's insulting too. Oh, you know me. How could you possibly know me? I just got here. You haven't even talked to me.
I know. I know. Bet your bottom dollar if you're new, we know a lot about you. For instance, if you're new, we know this hasn't been a good year. Because nobody gets here on a winning streak. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody ever wakes up one day and they go, well, my stocks and bonds are just killing it. And the wife and kids are happy. And the boss loves me. Maybe I'll do something about all the Chardonnay I'm drinking.
I mean, come on.
[00:05:00]
If I had any choice in the matter, and I'm certainly not sober by choice, if I had any choice in the matter, my choice would always be not to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I did everything I could not to come here. Because I'm not a quitter. There's something about asking for help that just makes you feel like a quitter, doesn't it? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're in the gutter with a broken leg and your head's right up and you're bleeding half to death and you're trying to pull yourself up and somebody goes, come on, buddy.
I got it. I got it. Back off. I'm good. But I'm not bright either. I'm your typical run-of-the-mill drunk. I am the guy who the good idea is my bad idea. I'm the guy that right before I go to the emergency room, I say, hey, watch this. I'm the guy. I love to drink. I think that's important that you understand that and it's more important for me to say it for me. I love to drink. I hope I never forget how much I love to drink.
I hope I never forget. You see, it's easy for me to remember what alcohol did to me. And sometimes it's a little shadier, a little more difficult to remember what alcohol did for me. You know, when I was out there drinking, it's funny, I could always envision a sober life when I was drunk on the couch. When I was drunk on the couch with a glass in my hand, I would look at the glass and I'd go, why do I do this?
I don't need this. This is ridiculous. You know, tomorrow I'm going to quit drinking. Tomorrow I'm going to take those files from the bottom of my desk drawer. I'm going to get things cleaned up at work. Tomorrow I'm going to call my mother up and I'm going to tell her I'm sorry. Tomorrow I'm going to call the IRS and get current with them. Tomorrow, tomorrow, over and over. And tomorrow never came.
And I was very confused on why I kept drinking. As my life got worse and worse and worse, I was confused until I hit the wall of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous and stopped for an extended period. Extended period for me, anything over 12 days. Think about how long it takes for me to very instantly be introduced to the reason that I kept drinking even as my life got more and more painful. I can't handle the pain of sober living.
I cannot handle living life on life terms. I hate reality. I had been living in a synthetic existence for so long that it had become my only normal reality. And it didn't start out that way. You know, I'm a kid that grew up in Hollywood, California in a very typical neighborhood, typical, you know, for the street I grew up on, which was when I was two years old. My dad got up off the couch, said he was going out for a pack of smokes, and we never saw him again.
Absolutely normal for the neighborhood I grew up in. Lots of single moms raising single families. Lots of violence. This neighborhood I grew up in, I mean, it was drugs, it was alcohol, it was pimps, it was hustlers, it was street gangs. It was wonderful. What a perfect playground for a budding alcoholic to grow up in. Hollywood, California. If you feel different, you feel like a day late and a dollar short, you feel like you don't fit in, move to Hollywood.
They won't notice. You ever drive down the street and you see something weird and you think to yourself, well, there's something you don't see every day? You never say that in Hollywood. Never. You see it every day. It's absolutely normal that it's crackers there. And I grew up in a home with alcoholism. Here's the thing about my childhood, which I'm not going to spend a lot of time on. You need to understand two things about my childhood.
One, it's over. Important information I didn't have when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And the other thing is, like a lot of us, the longer I'm sober, the better it gets. Because I came in here, and I'm telling you, I had a horrible childhood. And I was quick to tell you about it. Quick to tell you about my mom's alcoholism and the dad that left and the physical abuse and all those things. And it's not that those didn't happen, but it's a one-sided story.
Because when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous and you get a sponsor, and they take you kicking and screaming through the process of the 12 steps. And what happened for me is I got to the inventory process in steps four and five. And I did what the book talks about. I got down in black and white, what really happened. And it's astounding to me the things I conveniently forgot on my way to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like I had a mom that raised three kids on her own, never took a dime of welfare. She got us up for school, got us off to school, took two buses to work and two buses home to put food on that table. There was love taught in that home. There was respect taught in that home. There were morals taught in that home. I had athletic coaches that took an interest in me, teachers that took an interest in me, neighborhood friends, family friends that took an interest in me.
And what I found out through inventory when I really looked at my whole life and the way that I lived is for whatever reason, I ended up in Alcoholics Anonymous more dead than alive at age 31.
[00:10:02]
Had absolutely nothing to do with family or environment or those bad breaks or misunderstandings. And the reason it's so important for a guy like me to stop being a victim in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous is ultimately if it really is their problem, I will die from the drink. Because I'm telling you, when I came here and I read your book, I was looking for the chapter entitled, What To Do When You Know It's Their Fault.
And it's just not in there. What we got here is a program for the individual. And I'm not saying those things were all wonderful in the house I grew up on, but I'll tell you what, they might color my personality a little bit, but they're not the reason I drink. And not the reason I drink alcoholically. I'm an alcoholic because of that strange effect that alcohol has in my system. It only happens to about 10% of us.
And I didn't know that when I started to drink. The guys standing around me didn't know that. They didn't look at me and say, no, not you, Donnie. Not you, you're the 10%. But they should have had an inkling. Because right from the beginning, I didn't drink socially. I don't understand social drinking. I've seen it. I've observed it. It's very easy to tell. It looks different than the way we drink, doesn't it?
Somebody in your family is a social drinker. Ask them what's their mindset before they drink. And they'll say something like this. Well, I don't drink often, but when I do, it's usually on a tough day at work. Or maybe a good day at work. And really what I'm looking for is a little relaxation. It's usually socially involved. And I have a drink. And when I have that drink, I have a feeling of relaxation come over me.
And the music starts going better. I kind of feel that beat, you know what I mean? And I'll order another drink. And about halfway through that other drink, I'll start to feel it. So I'll stop. Pay attention. They start to feel it, and then they stop. That's alcohol abuse. It makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. When we start to feel it, we hit the accelerator. We don't need a drink and a half to even hit that process.
I can have, when I was deep into the drinking game, I could have a feeling of relief, a sensation of comfort driving to the liquor store. I could have a feeling of serenity start to build within me as I watched the clock approach 5 o'clock, and I knew at 5.10 I'd have a half pint open in the front seat of my car, and I'd be getting what I needed to feel okay that night. I don't even have to drink alcohol to start having an effect produced in my mind.
Just so we talked about, the sensation is so elusive that though I admit it's injurious, though I admit it's killing me, I can't differentiate the true from the false. My alcoholic life seems the only normal one, and nothing gets it for a guy like Don more than a couple of drinks. I just want to have a couple of drinks. That's all I'm looking to do. And the problem is, when I have those couple of drinks, I can't stop.
And I don't know any of this. And so when I start drinking, I'm drinking like the reason most of us start to drink. I'm drinking to fit in. And I don't understand that I'm having an unnatural reaction to alcohol. And the unnatural reaction isn't that, and some people make it sound this way, that, you know, like, first time I drank, my friends were together, and we got a fifth of whiskey, and everybody took a little sip, and they spit it out, and I finished the fifth, and I stole a car and went on a crime spree, and I'm like, I didn't, you know.
I was 17 years old with the guys I played high school basketball with, and we bought some Old English 800, which is a, that's a fine malt beverage if there ever was one. Man, and I was somewhere through that second tall can of Old English 800, and, I mean, a feeling came over me from my head to my toes, it filled me from the inside out, and in that moment, everything changed. And everything stayed the same.
I'm with guys I played volleyball with. You know, I love these guys, even my running mates, but now I'm looking at these guys, and I love these guys. And I turned into a big goober, started telling them about it. It's not cool where I come from. You don't tell the guys that you run with, how much I love you, man, we're going to be together forever. And I'm listening to the rock and roll music coming out of that cheap stereo in that wreckety car that we drove up to the Hollywood Reservoir, and I'm thinking it's the greatest song I've ever heard in my life.
Everything is perfect. I'm with the guys I want to be with, doing what I want, listening to great music, and I'm looking down at the Hollywood Reservoir, and it's like the sun's getting low, and there's just a little bit of light glimmering on the water, and the Hollywood Reservoir is like a concrete pond. That's all it is, surrounded by a 45-degree angle hill with chaparral and scrub oaks, right? And I remember looking at it and thinking, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.
And then I experienced something that I always experience every time I drink. I start to think, and I have brilliant ideas when I drink. And my idea was, I've got to get down to that water. So I start down this hill, you know, and I'm just walking, you know. So I start down this hill, you know, and I'm just walking, you know, but then I'm kind
[00:15:00]
of walking fast, and then I'm kind of jogging, and then my feet are like windmilling behind my ears as I'm going down, and I fell, and it was like sky, earth, sky, earth, sky, earth, all the way down, and I slam into this tree, and I just, and I'm an athlete, so, I'm able to ascertain instantly, I'm really going to be hurt, and I get up from the tree and I check myself out, and there's no pain. My first drunk, and I'm already acquiring valuable information about drinking, when you drink, there's no pain. I mean, I'm always a guy, I'm after that, I'm after no pain, I have no tolerance to pain, you know, the guys, you know, guys in the gym, what's our motto? No pain, no gain. I got my own motto, no pain, no pain. And I don't know that I've had an unnatural experience, I don't know that, for lack of a better term, and for the first time in my life, I've had a spiritual awakening.
I don't, the next day, my first hangover, and after my friends made fun of me, and after I got brutally sick, and after I come home, and I'm an embarrassment to my mom, you know, your friends just kind of roll you out of the car and drive off, and, you know, you got to crawl to your own front door, and your mother's yelling, you're drunk, you're brilliant, you know, just a sass of my mom, which I never did, you know, it's like the next day when I think about everything, all I remember is that moment on the top of the hill where everything was perfect. I don't remember the throwing up, or the embarrassment, or the failure, I just remember that moment, and I didn't say, you know, I'm going to destroy my life and anybody's life who has the misfortune of loving me, I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep drinking, and I just remember thinking, I'm going to be doing more of that.
That was great, and the early part of my drinking was trouble-free, I got to tell you, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, you know, I'm not getting in a lot of trouble, but, you know, it's a funny thing, in the big book in the back, in Spiritual Experience, it says quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the change long before he is himself, and they're talking about the spiritual metamorphosis we go through in recovery, but I think that happens when we're out there drinking, because it seemed that everybody around me knew that something bad was happening to me, that I was changing, I was becoming something that they weren't used to seeing. They saw the flakiness in me, the irresponsibility in me, they saw my love affair with the booze, they started to talk to me about my drinking long before I thought it was a problem, and I didn't get defensive, I just, when somebody comes at you with that information, you just think they got the wrong guy, don't you? I remember being in a hospital emergency room, and I'm drunk, and I've cracked my head open again, and the doctor's stitching me up, you know, and because I've been drinking, they can't give me anything for the pain, and I'm not moving, I'm not squirming, I'm not nothing, he's like, can you feel this? I go, oh yeah, you so, doc, I'm fine, I prescribed for myself, and he starts talking to me about my drinking. He goes, you seem like a nice young man, you ever thought about quitting drinking or maybe slowing down? I just looked at the doctor like he'd grown a second head, and I was like, no. Why would I? Because alcohol's allowing me to be anything I want to be, not feel anything I don't want to feel, and at 23 years old, my life looked good on the outside. I'd gone up the ladder in business, you know, I got a secretary, I got an office, I got two assistants, I'm hiring, firing a crew of about 40, 50 people, I'm working in the aerospace fastener industry, I mean, the future's bright. Everything's good, and I can outwork anybody around me, and I earn my right to drink, and that's the way I look at it. I can't tell you how many guys I fired for their drinking, because they couldn't make it into work, or they couldn't work effectively. I said, hey man, you want to play, you got to pay. Real men get up and go to work, and I got up and I went to work when I wore a young man's clothes, no matter what. And alcohol was the carrot at the end of my nose that helped me pull the cart through life, you know. I could do anything with the promise of having a couple of drinks. I can work a 14 hour day, and I can outwork you, and I can make it happen, because I know when this day's over, I'm getting drunk, and I'm going to be okay. And when I was young, and I was drinking, it seemed that the cart that I pulled behind me was only filled with promise, and hope, and all the things, all the good things to come. And by the time I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I could barely move the cart, and the cart wasn't filled with hope, or promise, or dreams anymore. The cart was filled with pitiful, incomprehensible demoralization, and the wreckage of my past, and it was so full, and it was so heavy, I could barely get the wheels to turn. And yet the same thing is pulling me along. I still got that carrot of king alcohol pulling me along, still as bad as my life got, as full as the cart got with the wreckage, I still couldn't stop drinking. It's still what pulls me down the road. And I look back to the, you know, long before I started drinking, I mean, you know, I loved it when Bob was
[00:20:02]
talking about when he gets sober, you know, he gets weird. And that's an underused word in Alcoholics Anonymous, weird. That's a good word for us. I mean, that should be, that should be a little plaque on our walls, you know. Happy, joyous, and weird, you know. Because, because long before I, you know, I don't know if I was born alcoholic, but I was definitely born weird. I'm a little bit different. And I've got all the isms of alcoholism long before I drank. Even as a little kid, when I look back and I see it, the signs were there. I'm restless. I'm irritable. I'm discontent. I'm self-obsessed. I'm not much, but I'm all I think about. I was the kind of alcoholic that'd get you in a corner and trap you, and talk incessantly about myself for a half an hour straight, realize I'm doing that and go, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's entirely enough about me. What do you think of me? And this kind of self-obsession, this overindulgence of myself, am I being loved enough? Am I getting my fair share? What's the answer to life? Why are you looking at me that way? All these things, you know, these are not things produced by drinking alcohol. These are things that evaporate or diminish with a couple of drinks underneath me. All my life, seemingly, there's been a wall between me and the rest of the world.
I know you're trying to love me, and I'm trying to love you back, but it's just not getting through. A couple of drinks, the wall starts coming down, doesn't it? It's magic in a bottle. You know, it's the very first thing we ask our new friends to stop doing is drinking. You know, it seemed unreasonable to me when I was new. You're asking me to give up the only thing that's ever worked for me in my life. I know what's killing me, but God, there's got to be another way, and that's the thing that I chased for year after year after year after my life got bad. You see, I think until, alcoholism is killing me, but I'm ignorant of it until I'm about 25 years old. You know, they say ignorance is bliss. There's really something true about that, because I'm rolling along the road. I'm drinking myself to death.
Everybody else sees it, but they're looking at me, and they're going, he just doesn't get it. The family's talking to me. I don't know what they're talking about. The cops are talking to me. I don't know what they're talking about. The employers are talking to me. I don't know what they're talking about, but I'm ignorant of the fact, because I really don't think I have a problem, and then I got the gift of self-knowledge, and self-knowledge isn't delivered by any of those people I just mentioned. Self-knowledge was delivered to me at 2 in the morning in a dirty motel room, and there's a bunch of screaming in the room, and I realized the room's dead quiet. The screaming's in my head, in my voice, and the voice keeps saying, you're going to die if you don't do something about your drinking, and I got it, and man, all those years they've been talking to me about my drinking, and I finally got it. I said I couldn't believe it that they were right, and I remember thinking at that moment I was going to quit drinking, and I knew to the marrow of my bones I was going to stop, and it was going to be very easy to do, because now I understood that it was a problem for me. I made the alcoholic declaration, and you know what that is, you tell everybody you know you're quitting drinking, so don't try to tempt me, because I'm done, and I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't get a sponsor, and I didn't work your 12 steps, and I didn't get involved in service, and I didn't get a home group, and I quit drinking without you, thank you very much, for two weeks. Now this is where I think alcoholism really starts to really show its muscles, really starts to rev up, and really starts to spread its tentacles out. You know, these are the tentacles that end up affecting the wives, and the children, and the family members, and society, because they think until that point the family has some kind of a comfort. They can say, well, he's young, he's stupid, he doesn't get it, maybe he'll grow out of it, maybe he'll see the light one day, and one day I see the light, don't I? And I say to my family, I'm done, I'm not going to drink no more, I promise you, it's all over. You know, I'm dying, it was killing me, and they go, we know, we know kid, we're so happy, and what I don't know is before I make that declaration, before I have that gift of self-knowledge that feels so powerful, feels so valuable, now I understand, now I can stop, now I know what the problem is, never suspecting that self-knowledge has absolutely no ability to keep a guy like me sober, that understanding the problem isn't part of the solution for a guy like me, that my family's been having those back room meetings for years about me. What are we going to do about Donald? What are we going to do about his drinking? He's getting in so much trouble, he's not looking good, and now I tell him I'm quitting drinking, and they're having those back room meetings, aren't they? Did you hear he quit drinking? God, we're so happy, he seems so happy, he seems to be delighted with, no, it was his idea, he says he's going to die if he keeps drinking, he quit drinking, and I give my family the worst thing a drinking drunk can
[00:25:02]
ever give their family, I give them hope, because they think I believe it, and the truth is I do believe it. When I tell them I'm quitting, I mean it with every fiber of my being, yet two weeks later, there I am, all lit up, and I'm scaring the hell out of my family, because now I've told them I've got a problem, now I've told them I know I'm going to die if I keep drinking, and now I'm justifying and rationalizing why I'm drunk again, and I take my family on a wild, wild roller coaster ride for the next six years. All the sweet promises I broke, all the vain attempts to control and enjoy my drinking, as I dragged my family through the mud, as I dragged them through all the things that we drag people through, they had the misfortune of nothing more than to love us. You will get sick from my alcoholism with nothing more than you stood too close to me, you were in too close a proximity for too long, and you will be affected by my alcoholism, you will be affected by the insanity of the disease of alcoholism, simply by being too close to me. And I did everything I could to defend my right to drink, and to try to get away from the people I was hurting, I pulled the big geographic, I moved from L.A. to Boston for three years, and I found out they drink in Boston and put that plan completely out the window. You know, I came back to L.A.
and I got, after tearing up Boston for three years, I come back to L.A. and I get the best job I've ever had in my life. I mean, not, not, not why I was drinking, but I mean, to date, it might be the best job I've ever had in my life. Alcoholics are phenomenal. I mean, we are like a cat thrown outside a second story window, aren't we? We land on our feet in a three-piece suit in a job interview, you know? And we get the job. We can get jobs, we can get girls, we can get cars, we just can't keep them. We're really, we're really good at getting them, you know? And you know the story, you know, I worked on this job, and then I got fired for my drinking, and I played the victim card, and I called up my sister in Simi Valley, California, and I said, they've done me wrong after all I've done for them, can I come stay at your house and get on my feet? And my beautiful sister, Patricia, who I love as much as anyone on the planet, says, you can come to my house, but if you drink, you're out of my house, because everybody knows I'm a drunk by this time. And I told my beautiful sister, Patricia, I won't drink, I promise. And I meant it when I said it, but I'm an alcoholic, and I can't keep my word where the drink's concerned, and I drank every day in that house for seven months until I got sober. And if you don't know how you do that when they're watching you, well, maybe you're not a sneaky rat like I am. I got no problem drinking around your schedule. When do you go to work? 7 a.m.?
Bar's open. And I'm not drinking to kid myself I'm better looking. I'm not drinking so the music sounds better or the wall goes down. I'm doing oblivion drinking. I'm doing light switch drinking. I'm getting the whiskey on board hard enough and fast enough to shut off my head so I can get drunk and go into a blackout, so I can, you know, face the hideous four horsemen. Terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair. They sit on the end of the bed in this room I'm mooching off of my family and wait for me to come to and talk to me in my own voice and my own head and ask me those questions like, who are you going to hurt today, buddy? Who are you going to rip off today? And I swear I don't know what you do with a head like that on a hangover morning, but I just took another pull off the bottle and I just thought it was going to end that way. I surrendered to the idea that I was going to die drunk. I didn't know what else to do. I tried everything I could think of for six flat years to quit drinking and all I could do was fail. I get an unemployment check in September of 91. I go up to my brother-in-law Larry and I ask to borrow his vehicle to go cash my unemployment check and Larry asked me a strange question. He said, Don, will you be coming back this time? And fair question because I had borrowed his car a few times that summer and gone on little alcoholic vacations, we'll call them. We all know what those are. The 12 and 12 tells me as an alcoholic my outstanding characteristic is defiance.
So I got right in Larry's face and I said, Larry, how dare you? Well, the last time this happened I apologized to you. Not only did I apologize, I opened my heart to you. I don't really need this crap right now, Larry. Larry, untreated al-nan that he was, felt terrible and took the keys out and I snatched the keys to his car from this man who I'm mooching a room off of and walked out of his house to get in his car and I remember thinking there better be gas in it. The delusions of entitlement that alcoholics suffer from don't have any bounds. You have some, I don't have any. Why wouldn't you give it to me? It makes perfect sense in my self-centered mind. I go down to the liquor store to cash my unemployment check because that's where alcoholics of my type cash their unemployment checks. And I'm standing in line to cash it and I have what the book refers to as the thought that precedes the first drink. And the thought is always the same. Ah, what's in a half pint?
Can't get any trouble with a half pint. So I buy a half pint and I drink that in the car. So I buy a half pint and I drink that in the car, decide to have another, drink another half pint and I start to think I can go visit those friends in the valley and I'll be back
[00:30:02]
in 45 minutes. They won't even miss me and I'm gone. Three days later, I'm driving up the hill to face that family I'd done over one more time. Once again, I've taken their hope, their faith, and their trust and I've torn it to shreds. You need to hear this, driving up the hill to face that family I'd done over one more time. I love them no less than I love them in this very moment. I love my family tremendously, but I can't serve two masters. I can only serve one and that's king alcohol. You get between me and a drink, it's nothing personal. It's almost businesslike. I'm getting to the drink. I'm going around you, through you, manipulating you, but I'm getting to the drink. But when you have alcoholism and you don't know what you suffer from, you can't explain that to the people that you love. You can't warn them to stay away from you. So you say things like this, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to do that to you. I just got away from me. Can you give me another chance? And it got hard for my family to give me those second, those third, and those thirtieth chances when I kept roaring through their life over and over and over again. I walk into a house that's been devastated by the disease of alcoholism, the face, the heat. I found out my brother-in-law wanted to report the car stolen and my sister has negotiated him down to a missing persons report. Now, I have warrants for my arrest in two counties. So I start yelling at my sister. I got warrants, you know that. I'm going to jail. Thanks a lot. Because now it's her fault. I go outside to wait for the police to show up because I don't want the interview to go on in front of the family. I don't know what I'm going to be saying, but I know I'll be lying, right? I go outside and here comes the black and white and on the side of the black and white it says canine unit. I think, oh beautiful, they brought the dog. Like I'm in any shape to make a run for it. And the cop gets out and he starts asking me those tough questions. They're trained to do this. Like where were you? And everything I remember is illegal. So I'm making up a story and he's looking at my eyes really hard. He's leaning in and I'm moving away from him and I move over here and he moves with me. So now we're interviewing and dancing. And he's giving me that cop look where he knows you're dirty and he just doesn't know how and you're just trying to be cool and you don't feel good and your hands are wet. And I just wanted to divert his attention. And I saw the dog in the back seat. I go, hey is that your partner? And he says, well yes it is. And he walks over and he opens the door and this dog gets out. German Shepherd. Not a hair out of place.
Like a Rin Tin Tin reincarnate. And with no prompting on my part he started to relay facts to me about the dog's life. The dog's past mandatory retirement. They can't retire him. He's just too good. The dog has participated in more arrests than any dog in the history of Ventura County. The dog has participated in more arrests and rescues than any dog in the history of Ventura or Los Angeles County. This dog was so phenomenal that the officers took a collection out of pocket to send them over to Europe for international competition where he kicked butt on German German Shepherds.
I'm looking at this dog and I say to the cop, I go that's a phenomenal dog you have there sir and this thought flies in the back of my mind. The kind of thought the minute you think it you know it's true. You want to deny it but you know it's true. And what was true is this dog had done significantly more with his life than I had done with mine. I hated that dog. I go back in the house and my sister tells me I got to go. She doesn't tell me looking at me she tells me looking at her shoes. And the reason she looks at her shoes, we talked about this years later, she goes I couldn't look at you anymore. I couldn't let you lie to my face one more time. And she looked at her shoes and she said you got to go. I know now that I've lost you and you're going to die. And there's nothing I can do about it.
But you can't die here, you're tearing us apart. And she was right. And if I had any self-respect or any real love for another human being I would have said you know I don't blame you and I would have got my gear and cleared out. But I'm an alcoholic self-centered to the extreme and it's all about me. And I'm not too proud to beg and I gave an academy award performance. I turned on the waterworks and I begged for another chance. I said I'll go to AA and everything. And then look behind me to see who said that part you know. Because like a day before I got here I wasn't thinking about you. And my family didn't believe I was going to go to AA. My first couple of weeks here my sister drove me to AA and picked me up from AA. You know that makes you feel when you look the way I look and you get in your older sister's compact car at the end of the night and you know your 31 year old loser brother driving you back to her house. So Donald what did you learn in AA tonight?
[00:35:13]
Don't remember my first night in Alcoholics Anonymous but I remember my second night simply because I got lucky man I hit the lottery. Not everybody does. I hit the lottery my second night in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't know it. She would come up to me right after what happened happened and said Jesus man you just hit the lottery. Everything is going to be awesome now. Just stay out of the way. I would have said what are you talking about?
But I know now looking back I see the hand of God in everything that happened. Because I'm on my second day of sobriety and I'm detoxing hard. I'm suffering from visual and audio hallucinations. I got greasy hair down my back. I got a full beard with food stuck in it. I've lost the ability to speak the king's English. I communicate in a series of hand gestures grunts and clicks. And my back's against the wall in the Simi Valley Alano Club and I'm wearing my sunglasses at night. I'm 6'5 and 250 pounds and I am terrified.
And when you're as big as I am and I'm that scared I am dangerous and I look dangerous. I have honed the persona of the tough guy, the wannabe tough guy from years and years of running the street and I'm putting it out in Alcoholics Anonymous and most people are falling for it. They're giving me a wide berth. They're not talking to me and I'm okay with that because I don't want to talk to anybody. I'm having a very, very hard time my second night in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be able to stay there and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to go get a drink that night because I'm coming apart at the seams. The bolts are flying off. And there's two guys in the corner 30 feet away from me, Mark and Lou. Mark and Lou are card-carrying members of Alcoholics Anonymous.
You see this is the most important night of my life. I'm playing a game called You Bet Your Life. My bacon's in the frying pan. I'm probably not going to make it. It's anybody's guess whether I'm going to live or whether I'm going to die. But not for Mark and Lou. Mark and Lou, it's Tuesday. They're where they are every Tuesday and every Wednesday and every Thursday. And the card-carrying members of Alcoholics Anonymous and what they saw was a terrified, scared young man who was dying from a disease called alcoholism.
And they did what they did every night when they saw that in Alcoholics Anonymous. They walked 30 feet over to me and they introduced themselves to me. They said, hey, my name is Mark. This is Lou. We don't think we've met. Could it be that you're new? Maybe. It doesn't sound like much, does it? We talk about that in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't think it can be underestimated how important that action is in Alcoholics Anonymous.
I would dare say it's the most important thing that we do in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is welcome our new friends cordially and make them know that we are very happy you're there. And this is why it is so important to understand that 30 feet that Mark and Lou did that they do every night, how important it is that they took that journey to me. Because as a new man on my second day in Alcoholics Anonymous, if you're asking me to make that same journey back to them, I can't do it. It's a million miles. I've lost every good thing in my life.
I've hurt everyone that's had the misfortune of caring about me. Don't you understand how hard it is just to be standing here? Do you know that my life has run out my sleeves? Nobody will talk to me anymore. I've got these voices in my head that I want to drink so bad I can't take it. And I can't go say, I can't shake your hands and I don't know what I'm going to do and there's no safe direction. And I'm going to die from alcoholism if I don't get a miracle. And God said, Mark and Lou, they didn't look like miracles.
And they sat me down at a table. And Mark sat down with me and Lou clapped me on the back and Lou said, Don, this is Mark. Mark's going to be your sponsor. And he walked away. And they assigned me my first sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I know that's not done everywhere and but in my case it was probably a good idea. Because you hear things in AA, you go to meetings, almost every meeting I go to, they'll say get a sponsor, get a sponsor, my favorite one, find somebody that has what you want. Huh. I wonder what I want my second night in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't know but I guarantee you I wouldn't have picked the weenie boy they assigned to me, you know what I mean? He's everything I'm not, man.
He's clean cut, he's soft of voice, he's reverent. He's reverent. I'm not reverent of anything. I open a candy bar, I drop the trash on the floor. You and I get to a door first, I'm going in first, bet your bottom dollar. I'm the guy that asks bright questions like what are you looking at? Not Mark. Mark is reverent. Mark is thank you and how are you, nice to
[00:40:09]
see you, he's clean cut, his nails were perfect, yet he's a carpenter that works with his hands. He got clean before he came to Alcoholics Anonymous at night and put on a clean shirt and he's in love with God. I don't even believe in God. There's stuff you hear around AA too. I don't talk to the new people about God until they get their feet underneath them. I don't want to scare them away. My first sponsor didn't get that memo because the first time we met, oh my God, he's telling me what God did for him, what God did for you, what God did for them, what God was going to do for me. He's expecting a miracle and he was on fire with Alcoholics Anonymous. As the book says in working with others, he was a man sufficiently armed with facts about himself that had a real answer that he wasn't afraid to share and he won my entire confidence in a couple of hours. Immediately got me to do things that I would have never done for anyone else immediately. I didn't even know this guy and he just started telling me, without my permission I might add, what I would be doing in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because he gives you those first few questions. Why are you here? Because I'm dying, man. I can't stop drinking. My life's terrible. My family's done with me. I don't know what I'm going to do. Okay, alright, calm down, take a breath.
Are you willing to go to any length for victory over alcohol? That's a trick question. Because I may be new, but I'm not slow, you know. You know the right answer there. Well, let me think about it. That's not the right answer. Of course I am. I'll do anything. I'll do anything. Okay, good. Well, I'm glad you're so willing. He gets out the meeting directory. These are the meetings you'll be going to. He starts circling meetings. I remember thinking that's an awful lot of circling. He's circling, circling. He's telling me about the program as he's circling the meetings I'll go to on Monday, the meetings I'll go to on Tuesday.
And then he stopped at some point. He said, oh, by the way, are you working right now? I said, no, I'm currently unemployed. More circling, more circling, more circling. Gets me a big book. Gets me a 12 and 12. And then he insults me. Because when you start a relationship with a sponsor, it's always important that the sponsor insults the sponsor immediately. Which by the way you will do whether you mean to or not if you're a sponsor. Because we're so sensitive when we're new. And so I'm ready to leave. And he asks, in all concern, I know he's just concerned, but God, it just pissed me off. And he said to me, he goes, do you think you can go home tonight and not drink? Well, for God's sakes, it's my second night of recovery. It's just, what, no faith in me? And it kind of pissed me off. And so I'm kind of a smart ass. I spit back at him. I go, listen, buddy, any idiot can go a day without drinking. He goes, oh, you're going to be perfect for our program. And he got me busy in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, busy, busy, busy in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he taught me how to be an AA member. Fourteen meetings a week, commitments at every meeting.
Because he had a commitment at every meeting he went to. He said, if you go to a meeting on a regular basis and you don't have a job there, you're a visitor. It only becomes your meeting if you're willing to take a little job. Gratitude is an action around here. Don, you will see people celebrate anniversaries in Alcoholics Anonymous and walk right out the door past the new man. You will die if you try to do that. You are far too sick.
You need to take the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous that are dictated in the big book and are dictated by the experience and the fellowship and the way that we conduct ourself in meetings. You will have commitments. You will give rides. Man, he was all about the traditions, the steps, the big book. You know, I got sober in an Alano club. And in the Alano club they had a big glass case. You know, they had all the drunk junk in there and the bumper stickers and stuff. And he caught me looking at the bumper stickers one day. He goes, what are you doing? I go, I'm picking out my bumper sticker. He goes, well, if you ever get a car, you're not getting a bumper sticker. He believed that was a violation of the level of press, radio, films and TV. He goes, Don, I haven't seen you drive yet, but I've seen you walk. And we don't want you representing our fellowship out on the road. You will not get a bumper sticker. And he took me to court to face my warrants. I remember when he came up to me, you know, he got me this job. God. First of all, he had me give up my unemployment I was collecting. He let me get 30 days in the program. He goes, why aren't you working? And I liked the guy by the time I got 30 days, so I didn't lie.
I should have lied. I said, well, I don't have to work. I'm collecting unemployment. That's the wrong answer, by the way. He told me cancel your unemployment or get a new sponsor. I thought this program was suggested. I found that that's not true either. true either. Then I wanted to go back in the business world. He said, nah, you'll make the big money, then your ego won't be smashed, then you'll drink and you'll die and it won't
[00:45:02]
matter anyway. No, we need something humbling for you, Don. And he found out I never work with my hands and he got me a job as a laborer on a framing crew and I just sucked at this job, you know what I mean? I was just horrible. I had a nickname on the job site, The Bleeder, you know. This is all early sobriety stuff. I look back at it now and I'm like, man, God was right on time. If crushing your ego is necessary to get sober, my ego was being crushed at every turn. I was like, man, I was doing better when I was drinking. It just kept getting worse and he finds out I got a day off from work and he goes, hey, we should go to court.
And we always go to court in AA. That's not a big deal. I mean, I was only three months sober. I was used to going to court. We're always going to court. We're always going to support somebody, to stand up for somebody, to wave goodbye to somebody. We go to court in AA. And I said, who are we going for? He goes, we're going for you. Perfect newcomer response. I said, why? They don't even know where I'm at. He said something about living free and living free of your wreckage and people can't give you rides forever and you got to clean this up. And man, and then we go to court and I got to go in my Salvation Army suit and face the judge. And, you know, I get the, I get the community service and the huge fine. I did so much community service at the Salvation Army in Simi Valley that when I completed it, they threw me a party. I mean, that's a lot of community service where they love you when you're done, man. And I just kept walking down the road with this guy and he just, he just didn't care. I remember, God, I'm five months sober. I'm not even through my step work. I haven't even started my amends yet. He comes up to me one day and he goes, hey, what are you doing to say thank you to that family who's letting you get sober? That family you treated so poorly, they're letting you get sober at their house. What are you doing to say thank you? Well, I'm not drinking. He goes, well, that's mighty big of you. He said, go home tonight and ask your sister if there's something you can do for her. All right. So I went home and saw my sister and I said, hey, Pat, my sponsor wants to know if there's anything I can do to say thank you for you letting me get sober here. And she didn't miss a beat. She goes, well, you can paint my house.
I said, your whole house? And she said, yeah. I said, I'll get back to you. I got to talk to my sponsor. I go to my sponsor. I go, this crazy woman wants me to paint her two-story 3,800 square foot house. He goes, is she buying the paint? I go, well, I assume. He goes, ah, you got off easy. Paint her house. And I'm bitter. I'm pissed off. He said it so dismissively. He goes, ah, paint her house. And he walks away. And so I yelled at his bald head as he walked away. I said, hey, I thought this program was suggested. That was another mistake. Because I didn't know he could move that fast. Like, he spun on his heels. And like, he was back in my personal space, you know, and I'm like this, you know.
And he's like looking up at me. And there's that bony finger I'd come to loathe. And he says, listen, Don, you're so sick that anything that comes out of my mouth from this point forward, we're going to assume it's a direction. And we'll let you know when you've passed into the suggestion phase of the program, you know. Now I'm just going to tell you the truth. I've had a lot of sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous and either I'm really bad at picking them or all of them believe it's all direction.
I haven't found the guy yet that says, well, I'm not going to give you direction, but here's a suggestion. I always get the guys that are like, do it or get somebody else. Don't waste my time. You know, they can't just give you direction. You've got to hurt your feelings with it. It's the Tom Sawyer theories. No, no, please let me turn myself into the police. I was just kidding. Oh, my God. And we go on. I'm two years sober and I kind of lose a, I'm kind of losing my enthusiasm for Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm going to a couple meetings a night, secretarian meetings. I cleaned up some of the wreckage, you know. I got my driver's license back. I'm driving a death van around. You know, death vans are new. Nothing works on the brakes, don't work the engine. Here's one of them. It's just a night I die in the van giving a newcomer a ride home. You just don't know. I had one of those. I'm driving around and I was just kind of bored with the clubhouse sobriety, you know, and I had a chance to go check out another group and I found another home group and I started going to meetings there. It was so funny. This home group was over an hour's drive away from where I lived and I would drive an hour to meetings and an hour back just to go to those meetings because I loved the sobriety. And people where I had gotten sober saw me doing that and they thought I was crazy. And I said, man, I'll go to any lengths of sobriety. I'd drive two hours to go to a good meeting rather than drive across town for one that's making me crazy. And that was just my experience. You know, I had a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous and you know, you got to get friends around here. When I was, when I got sober, Greg had 30 days, right? And I love Greg, man. Greg was hooked up. You know, he's like the coolest guy I know. He's good looking. He was in great shape. And he really, man, he just believed
[00:50:01]
in this thing, you know. Greg became like my best friend in AA. And our first two years, man, we went shoulder to shoulder. We went to meetings together. We 12-step guys together. We took commitments together and we were going to do this forever. We used to say that to each other, man. I'm not going to drink. You're not going to drink. We're in this together. He'd say, yeah, man, we're in it forever. And Greg started having the same problems with AA I did at about two years, you know. You get a little burned out in the clubhouse meetings. You know, the lights start getting a little bit dim. You start losing a little of that enthusiasm. And I went looking for other meetings and I found another group.
And I went and found Greg, man. And I said, man, you got to check this out. I mean, they're structured shoulder to shoulder, common journey. You would love this. It would fit you like a glove. And Greg had hit that wall in sobriety and said, you know what? I didn't get sober to have somebody tell me what to do. I'm really over this whole sponsorship thing. I think me and my higher power are going to be just fine. And I got more involved in Alcoholics Anonymous at two years sober than I thought was humanly possible, you know. And I just started doing AA like 24-7 and was doing that. And Greg stayed sober. And I watched Greg's life change. I was best man at his wedding when he was three years sober. I watched him get a big promotion at four years sober. I watched him build a giant custom home in the Antelope Valley when he was five years sober. I watched him and Kathy who was nine years sober and six years sober with two brand new cars in the driveway living the high life.
Not drinking, not going to AA, just them and God. I'm going to AA every night. I'm hopelessly in debt still. I'm still paying off the IRS. I sponsor a bunch of guys that don't listen to me. I'm doing everything everywhere in Alcoholics Anonymous and nobody appreciates me. And I'm looking at Greg's life and I'm thinking, I'm the chump. I'm the chump. I'm the AA chump. Because he already got the prize and he left to go collect it. He's out living his life. He's living the good life and I'm in AA doing drudgery, mopping floors, taking crap from old timers, laughing at me. And then I got the call. I got the call from my first sponsor and he said, hey man, we got Greg. He's not doing good. He's asking for you. He drank. I'm like, you're kidding me. He goes, oh no. I threw Eileen in the car.
We drove about an hour and a half to where my first sponsor lived. And there's Greg. I'd never seen Greg drink and I'd only seen him 30 days and more sobriety. And he's in the corner with his feet pulled up to his chest and I couldn't believe, I couldn't come to tell myself I'd known him before. I mean, he resembled him, but he was completely different. He was like this small thing. And he was trembling. And he was turning to Lou, my first grand sponsor and going, is it time yet? Is it time yet? Is it time yet? Because they were feeding him a half a thimble of vodka every 40 minutes to keep him from going into seizure until they could get him into medical detox. And he's shaking and asking, is it time yet? Is it time yet? And it was the only thing that mattered to Greg at that moment was when is that half a thimble of vodka going to make it to my lips because I can't take it. And I waited until he had a thimble of vodka and I sat down with him and I gave him a hug and I said, tell me what happened, buddy. And this is what he told me. He said, I never thought I would drink again. My life was so good. Drinking was the furthest thing from my mind. And one day Kathy and I were sitting on the veranda and we looked out at our beautiful yard and our beautiful cars. And Kathy said, you know, Greg, we're not the same people that came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said, you're right, we're not. And she said, you know, we could probably handle a drink. He said, you're right, we probably could. And she said, but, you know, we're wrong. And the old timers are right. And it gets away from us. Promise me, Greg, promise me we'll go back to Alcoholics Anonymous and we'll get sponsors. He goes, Kathy, I love you. I promise. And he went and bought a bottle of champagne. And he poured two glasses of champagne and he poured the rest of the bottle out just in case. And then they drank that glass of champagne and they waited. And nothing happened. And they laughed and they laughed, Greg said. They said, oh, those fear mongers in Alcoholics Anonymous, look at us. We just had a drink. Do you feel like having another drink? No, I don't feel like having another drink. Do you feel like having another? No.
Phenomenal, I'm craving my ass. I feel great. And they laughed at us and they laughed at Alcoholics Anonymous. And Greg came home a week later and Kathy's working in the yard. She turns around, she's got a Budweiser in her hand. He goes, what's with the Budweiser? She goes, it's hot out. And he goes, yeah, it is. Give me one. And Greg said within a month they was drinking around the clock. Kathy had thought that alcohol wasn't her problem. It was psychiatry. She'd gone back on psychotropic drugs and was drinking on top of it and had a psychotic break and tried to kill him in a blackout. Greg had called the police and they'd scooped his wife up and hogtied her in front of him and threw her in a box van and took her down to Civil Brand Institute to await arraignment on attempted murder charges while they took him to the hospital and sewed him up from where she'd stabbed him. And he couldn't stop drinking. And I said, why, Greg, why? Why didn't you go back to AA? And he goes, buddy, we did. We did. When it got away from us, we went back to AA and we got sponsors and we went to meetings every night. But when you kick six years to the curb and you've got a bad day on day 17, a little voice pops in your
[00:55:01]
head and says, you know what, I can just start over. And Greg couldn't catch lightning in a bottle again. And I don't know if I got another recovery in me, but I know I got another drink in me. My best friend in Alcoholics Anonymous, as far as I know, drank himself to death and I haven't been able to find him. And I will tell you, when I arrived here today and I looked over the crowd, when I got here Friday and looked over the crowd, I always looked for Greg. I looked for Greg in every meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've never been in before. And I prayed that one day I'll find Greg in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because the last I heard, they shipped him off to his family in Ohio to drink himself to death because nobody could do anything for him anymore and he couldn't stop drinking.
And we come to Alcoholics Anonymous and we have a good time and we tell the stories and we laugh. And right underneath it, I know the truth. I know that there's deadly earnestness at work here. I know the name of the game that I play here is you bet your life. I'm running short on time. I want to tell you a little story and I'm going to sit down. This is very important to me. Ten years ago, almost 11 years ago, my beautiful wife Eileen and I, we lived in Los Angeles our whole lives, you know, we're city kids. We're concrete steel and glass, you know what I mean? And my wife wanted to live someplace beautiful.
She didn't want to wait until she retired and she wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest. And we did something really crazy, man. We moved up to Bellingham, Washington, 20 minutes from the Canadian border, you know, 100 miles north of Seattle. And it's unbelievable. There's 200 foot trees and deer in your backyard and giant lakes and streams and eagles overhead and it is dark at night, man. It is dark. It is, I mean, it is darkity-dark-dark, you know. I remember the first time I forgot something in the driveway and I just went out to my car to get something, man, and that darkness hit me about halfway to my car and a little voice in my head said, Cougar, you know, and I just like.
I flew back in the house and slammed the door and Eileen's like, what's with you? And I'm going, don't go with that flashlight. Very dark, darkity-dark-dark. And we love it, man. And we got busy in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know what I mean? We rolled up our sleeves. We got home groups. We started sponsoring people. We started starting meetings. We got involved in AA. And I talked to Clancy. Clancy told me before I get here, he gave me great direction. He goes, kid, when you show up, they're not going to like you. They won't like you for two reasons. One, you're not very likable. He goes, two, you're not from there. Don't try to change their mind. Don't tell them they're doing it wrong. Leave your L.A. resume at home. Just work. People respect work in Alcoholics Anonymous and that's what I did.
And we were there the first year, man. First summer comes along and the mama deer are showing up in our backyard and they got their baby fawns with them. It's just magical. I've never seen anything like that except on TV. And now it's in my backyard, man. Beautiful mama deer. Babies come around. This one mama deer in particular had this cute little boy deer. He's so cute. He had this big scar, this big scar across his nose. He must have got into it with one of the bucks. And we're city kids so we're giving them names. That's Mama Deer and Scratch. Mama Deer and Scratch. You know what I mean? And man, fall comes, rutting season comes and Scratch starts looking a little rough. You know what I mean? Starts losing his fur in chunks and he's looking bad. I'm telling my wife, I'm like, man, Scratch is looking bad. She goes, I don't know, maybe it's just something they go through before winter. And my wife's like that girl. You know what I mean? She gets on the internet and researches it and reports back to me, oh no, that's not normal. That's actually deer hair loss syndrome and it's serious. And if he loses enough hair, winter will come and he won't keep his furnace going enough. He won't get enough to eat to stay warm. He'll get hypothermic and he'll die. And I said, Scratch is going to die? And she goes, yeah.
And I go, oh, not on my watch. And I lost my mind. And I started doing supplemental feeding, building lean-to's, putting straw out in the backyard. I'm putting 100-pound sacks of cobb and molasses in my Toyota Avalon truck, driving them back to my place. And you can't just feed the one sick deer. So I got deer coming from all over. I got 15 deer in my backyard. I'm trying to shoo deer away. Let the sick one eat, dammit. It's snowing in my backyard. I got a lean-to built. And he's standing in the middle of the snow. Get under the lean-to, newcomer. He's just a stupid newcomer deer. He just doesn't take direction.
I go to work. I'm obsessed with this deer. I call. I leave from work. I go, how's Scratch today? Oh, he doesn't look good. I'd shake my fist to God. Not this one, God. Not this one. And he doesn't die. And for the next three or four years in rutting season, he would come to our backyard, this magnificent buck, huge rack, and he'd slowly walk up to my And I'd witness that and go, what was it about that deer that made me lose my mind?
[01:00:00]
And then one day it hit me, I'm that damn deer. I'm that damn fat, rounded out because he's being overfed, bald, mohawk back, ugly newcomer that walked into Alcoholics Anonymous and anybody, anyone with a glancing familiarity with alcoholism would have taken one look at me and said, that guy's going to die. And a couple of guys named Mark and Lou looked at each other and said, man, not on our watch.
And they did what they did in Alcoholics Anonymous. They were not going to let me die on their watch. And I'm so grateful for the activists in Alcoholics Anonymous that believe that. But I got to tell you something, Bill and Bob are gone. And it's our watch now. And while we're in here this weekend safe, sane, and sober, they are out there in the streets and they are dying. And they are coming now, Alcoholics Anonymous.
Bet your bottom dollar they are coming here. And the crazy part is they are coming looking for us and they don't even know it. They don't know what they're looking for. They've run out of hope. They don't have a plan. They just got nowhere else to go. They think it's going to be another thing that isn't going to work for them, just like I thought this would be another thing that wouldn't work for me.
And the question we have to ask ourselves, when they arrive in Alcoholics Anonymous, where are we going to be? Are we going to be in the rooms? Are we going to be at the door? Are we going to be watching for them as people watch for us? And I hope I never forget what my real purpose is in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not just being in AA and sponsoring men and doing business. But my purpose when I go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous isn't to catch up with my friends, isn't to see what's been good on TV.
It's to look for the newer man or woman that's come in and to do what they did to me, which is invite me along. It's the most important thing we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not our knowledge of the big book. It's not our breakthroughs on the steps. It's inviting people along. It's freely giving what's been given to us and letting people know they are welcome to come with us. We know the way out.
I hope we stay sober forever. And I hope we remember they're coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and they're looking for us. Thanks for listening. Thank you.